The Polish government is demanding that ISPs snitch on their customers who attempt to access websites it deems illegal.

The government wants to make the restrictions stricter for unauthorised online gambling sites and will require local ISPs to inform it about citizens’ attempts to access them. According to the Panoptykon Foundation, a digital rights watchdog, the government will compile a central registry of unauthorized websites to monitor.

According to the digital rights body, the government seeks to introduce a chief snooper that would compel data from ISPs disclosing which citizens tried to access unauthorised websites. In addition, the ISPs would have to keep the smooping requests secret from the customer.

Local organisations are unsurprisingly worried that the censorship’s expansion could turn out to be the first of many steps in an online limitation escalation.

Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media would back the creation of an internet censor to set out a framework for internet companies in the UK, the House of Lords Communications Committee was told.The three major UK ISPs were reporting to a House of Lords’ ongoing inquiry into internet censorship. The companies’ policy heads pushed for a new censor, or the expansion of the responsibility of a current censor, to set the rules for content censorship and to better equip children using the internet amid safety concerns .

Citing a report by consultancy Communications Chambers, Sky’s Adam Kinsley said that websites and internet providers are making decisions but in a non structured way. Speaking about the current state of internet regulation, Kinsley said:

Companies are already policing their own platforms. There is no accountability of what they are doing and how they are doing it. The only bit of transparency is when they decide to do it on a global basis and at a time of their choosing. Policy makers need to understand what is happening, and at the moment they don’t have that.

The 13-strong House of Lords committee, chaired by Lord Gilbert of Panteg, launched an inquiry earlier this year to explore how the censorship of the internet should be improved. The committee will consider whether there is a need for new laws to govern internet companies. This inquiry will consider whether websites are sufficiently accountable and transparent, and whether they have adequate governance and provide behavioural standards for users.

The committee is hearing evidence from April to September 2018 and will launch a report at the end of the year.

One year ago, it became public knowledge that the Government intends to introduce legislation relating to communications data. We did not learn of this in Parliament, but in media leaks.

It has become clear that a critical component of the Communications Data Bill is that UK communication service providers will be required by law to create data they currently do not have any business purpose for, and store it for a period of 12 months.

Plainly, this crosses a line no democratic country has yet crossed — paying private companies to record what their customers are doing solely for the purposes of the state.

These proposals are not fit for purpose, which possibly explains why the Home Office is so keen to ensure they are not aired publicly.

There has been no public consultation, while on none of your websites is there any reference to these discussions. Meetings have been held behind closed doors as policy has been developed in secret, seemingly the same policy formulated several years ago despite widespread warnings from technical experts.

That your businesses appear willing to be co-opted as an arm of the state to monitor every single one of your customers is a dangerous step, exacerbated by your silence

Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy, both in terms of how much data is collected about them and how securely that data is kept. Many businesses have made a virtue of respecting consumer privacy and ensuring safe and secure internet access.

Sadly, your customers have not had the opportunity to comment on these proposals. Indeed, were it not for civil society groups and the media, they would have no idea such a policy was being considered.

We believe this is a critical failure not only of Government, but a betrayal of your customers’ interests. You appear to be engaged in a conspiracy of silence with the Home Office, the only concern being whether or not you will be able to recover your costs.

We urge you to withdraw your participation in a process that in our view is deeply flawed, pursuing a pre-determined solution that puts competition, security and privacy at risk in an unprecedented way.

The Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (ISPAI) is knocking Britain’s new plan that requires surfers to select whether or not they want internet blocking, calling it nothing less than censorship.

The ISPAI said the responsibility should lie with parents policing what their children view on the web and not the business of the U.K. government. ISPAI’s Paul Duran told the Irish Independent:

If Internet service providers are dictating what can be accessed, then that could be seen as nothing less than censorship. Essentially we would be deciding what would be the inappropriate material. That should be left to the parents or guardians.

The ISPAI represents 20 ISPs in Ireland including Eircom, O2, Vodafone and UPC.

Critics of the British move said there are a number of practical issues that are being overlooked and need to be addressed. The restrictions could lump in websites that do not contain sexually explicit material.

Digital law expert JP McIntyre said:

Many of these blocking issues are easy to circumvent, but what they do tend to do is damage people who have been wrongly blocked. You’ll find that shops selling things like lingerie get blocked by these filters,

Very often there are no appeal mechanisms or they are very hard to use and in the meantime people find that their businesses are suffering because people can’t access their sites and they don’t know why.

Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald refused to comment on whether there were any plans to persuade Irish ISPs to adopt the British model.

Websites that encourage people to commit suicide or make death pacts with strangers must be closed down, ministers will insist this week.In the absence of any official organisation to monitor such websites, ISPs are to be told they have an obligation to shut down these chatrooms and forums, as part of the Government’s suicide prevention strategy.

Promoting suicide is already outlawed under the 1961 Suicide Act, but this has never been used to prosecute a website operator. Officials say the law does not apply only to face-to-face meetings, and should be enforced more rigorously if companies fail to shut down offending websites.

Health Minister Paul Burstow said:

One of the nastier sides of social media is the emergence of websites which are almost coaching people into how to commit suicide and offering the possibility of pacts with other people to commit suicide — really evil stuff.

Websites begin in a therapeutic way – I think because the people who run them think it’s a place for people to share how they feel when they are very low and don’t have much hope in life.

Then they move from being therapeutic to being supportive, a friend network. But the end result is it becomes a closed circle… nobody on those websites is going to confess to anybody outside.

It becomes a depressive circle of people talking about all types of things, which give them knowledge – because the sites give you various ways of taking life if that is the decision you chose – and friendship with people thinking the same way.

They use all kinds of words like ‘Catching the bus or Making the journey – slang words – other people might not understand.’